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As a scientifically-minded person, Alma 32’s experiment-based approach has always appealed to me. I was thinking this morning: what if this applies to more than just faith? What if you can test any spiritual concept via experimentation and evaluate it by its fruits? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that when it comes to principles and people, you can know if they’re good by their fruits. If you see that doing something has good results, you can reasonably conclude it is good. Likewise for bad things.
I guess what I’m saying is that these two concepts are really one in the same, but different in application.
So if you want to know if some heterodox principle or practice is true/acceptable, you can experiment with it for a while and see what good it does. You sometimes need to wait for it to sprout fruit before you can really judge it. If it’s bad, you discontinue it. If it’s good, you continue living it.
It’s important to remember that God’s garden is more than just olive trees.
Are you going to try polygamy!!! 😯 
I believe in experimenting with ideas and beliefs – as long as they appeal both to my mind and my heart. I am willing to experiment with something that appeals to one or the other – as long as it doesn’t disgust either my mind or my heart.
I have no desire whatsoever to experiment with anything that does not appeal to either my mind or my heart. (So, polygamy is off the table.)
Funny, because as a scientifically minded person I’ve never liked the approach of Alma 32. To me it strikes too much as starting with the premise of something being true, and then do everything possible to confirm that you’re right. It’s the ultimate in confirmation bias. The scientific method starts with no preconceived assumptions and analyzes and evaluates the data on its own merits. This was actually part of my faith crisis. When I decided I didn’t want to start with any assumptions that something is true before I look at the data. Following a more scientific method than that espoused in Alma 32 was what allowed me to finally see things more clearly.
Of course, this is all from my admittedly biased perspective… We’re never really free from bias as much as we might try. But at least science is willing to reevaluate and accept that it might be wrong. I was never allowed (or so I felt) to consider the possibility that certain truth claims of the church might be wrong.
To me, Alma 32 is great advice on how to confirm to yourself that what you already believe is right.
To be fair to the chapter, it does say it works only if what is planted actually is good. So, like so many other areas, I agree with the chapter and its criticism. Both are important, valid, and more complicated than they appear at first glance.
I fully agree with Tom on this one. I used to think Alma 32 was a “scientific” approach, back on my mission. I was suprised it didn’t work for everyone. Now… I think there are better approaches to take if you want to come closer to the “objective truth”. As for the “good”, I also think this has the potential to change over time. What you thought was good last year, might not be good this year. And in a year or two, many of the things you think are “good” right now might turn out not to be. I’d much prefer Buddha’s analogy:
Quote:A man traveling along a path came to a great expanse of water. As he stood on the shore, he realized there were dangers and discomforts all about. But the other shore appeared safe and inviting.The man looked for a boat or a bridge and found neither. But with great effort he gathered grass, twigs and branches and tied them all together to make a simple raft. Relying on the raft to keep himself afloat, the man paddled with his hands and feet and reached the safety of the other shore. He could continue his journey on dry land. Now, what would he do with his makeshift raft? Would he drag it along with him or leave it behind? He would leave it, the Buddha said. Then the Buddha explained that the dharma is like a raft. It is useful for crossing over but not for holding onto.”
Quote:The scientific method starts with no preconceived assumptions and analyzes and evaluates the data on its own merits.
That may be the ideal, but it falls short in practice. Every scientist has biases and tests them. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are wrong. And sometimes it takes a lot of evidence to convince them of previous errors.
There is also the converse approach to Alma 32; you start with a premise and you try to show that it is false. There is no ‘one’ scientific method (sometimes the hypothesis is first, sometimes it’s analysis of data), but I see where you’re coming from with the confirmation bias thing. The fear of confirmation bias is very much a part of my current faith transition.
I think the underlying principle still works, even if it’s presented via instructions that would produce confirmation bias; if you want to know if something that appeals to you is good, you can try it out and evaluate its effects. If the fruits are good, you might be onto something.
Beefster wrote:
There is also the converse approach to Alma 32; you start with a premise and you try to show that it is false.There is no ‘one’ scientific method (sometimes the hypothesis is first, sometimes it’s analysis of data), but I see where you’re coming from with the confirmation bias thing. The fear of confirmation bias is very much a part of my current faith transition.
I think the underlying principle still works, even if it’s presented via instructions that would produce confirmation bias; if you want to know if something that appeals to you is good, you can try it out and evaluate its effects. If the fruits are good, you might be onto something.
Good point. The ideal in many scientific circles is to do that very thing – try to prove a hypothesis false. It’s when a hypothesis fails to be proven false over and over again that it gets solidified into proven theories. But even then, there is always the chance new data could come along and change the whole paradigm, and good science is open to this possibility. The value of the method lies in the fact that it is repeatable and verifiable by others. When others conduct the same experiments trying to prove or disprove the same things, they should get the same results – otherwise it’s not good science.
With the Alma 32 approach, I think we can all agree that it is not repeatable or verifiable. Many can apply the same approach and get vastly different answers. I think the value of Alma 32 lies primarily in its application to trying out a philosophy. Sure, see if a certain philosophy works for you and bears “good” fruit in your life. If it works, adopt it. But as a method of discovering objective truths it falls far short.
But it’s the method I applied for so long in my own life to keep my doubts at bay. Things like evolution, the global flood, a literal Adam and Eve, the Book of Abraham, the Book of Mormon, garden of Eden in Missouri, Kolob, etc, etc. I could go on and on, but all these things that weren’t making sense to the scientific side of my mind, and I accepted them anyway because of the good fruits I had experienced. My conclusions now are vastly different. The Alma 32 formula allows me to test if a philosophy can bring good fruit into my life, but it can’t tell me if certain things are objectively true, especially things that are falsifiable and have multitudes of data that would suggest a different conclusion.
So there is still value in the lessons one can learn from applying the Alma 32 recipe, for me the value lies in discovering personal “truths” and not in objective ones.
I have found that even bad things can induce good feelings though. Like overeating. If you want something to become delicious to you, and immediately experience swelling motions, try that SilentDawning wrote:
I have found that even bad things can induce good feelings though. Like overeating. If you want something to become delicious to you, and immediately experience swelling motions, try that
Sometimes, the bad effects are more subtle or long-term and sometimes hard to cognitively link to the action. In the case of overeating, you get fat.I’m not sure overeating is really the best example. It gives you stomache aches and bloat not long after. The pleasure is in the eating part… and that’s about it.
Ask a true gourmet / gourmand if eating too much is worth it, even if it shortens their life. We do what we enjoy and what we value, and, sometimes, those things end up binding us. Even in some of those cases, “by their fruits” is highly subjective – even in cases that can appear cut and dried to us – simply because fruit, like other foods, can be delicious to some people and repulsive to others. All we can do is try to recognize our personal and cultural taste buds and decide what fruits are rotten to us – and then avoid ingesting those fruits.
According to the dictates of their own conscience . . .
I was actually going to say something about fruit preferences. You beat me to the punch, no pun intended. I agree about finding what fruits are delicious to our selves. Ray’s gourmand example is a great one because it uses someone who highly values and strives for excellence in the culinary world, as opposed to someone with an over-eating disorder. It’s important to try and compare highlight reels to other highlight reels, not highlight reels to production room scraps. More and more I’m gaining a personal testimony of “according to the dictates of their own conscience” because it’s one of the highest forms of honoring the principle of agency and the ability of every human to be an agent of action.
Enron looked like it had a lot of money for quite some time – some pretty good fruit if you asked most people. However, unsavory means were the production of those fruits, and it eventually came down while causing a lot of unnecessary damage. Like Ray said, “by their fruits” can be highly subjective. If you don’t like grapes but compare the growth of your highly prized and valued pineapple to them, you’ll always end up failing.
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